Elon Musk drops lawsuit accusing OpenAI of breaching founding mission

By Rachel Graf

Elon Musk dropped a lawsuit alleging OpenAI and its chief executive officer Sam Altman breached a founding promise last year by prioritising profits over humanity — without saying why.
 

The billionaire withdrew his complaint a day before a California judge was set to hear OpenAI’s request for dismissal. Musk had accused the company of becoming a “de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft Corp. in violation of a founding agreement to be a non-profit that developed artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity.”

OpenAI and Musk have been engaged in a well-publicised battle since well before the court case. Musk was an early backer of the startup and part of its founding team, before he had a falling out with the company.

Musk recently raised $6 billion for his own AI company that he has positioned as an alternative to OpenAI. OpenAI had argued that Musk would use pretrial fact-finding and information sharing known as discovery in the San Francisco case to get access to its “proprietary records and technology.”

OpenAI also contended that Musk had previously backed the company’s plans to become a for-profit business and insisted it raise “billions.” OpenAI denied that there was ever a founding agreement for it to breach or that it had promised to make its technology open-source, as Musk has claimed.

On Monday Musk said he would ban Apple Inc. devices from his companies if OpenAI’s artificial intelligence software is integrated at the operating system level, calling the tie-up a security risk.

OpenAI declined to comment.

In a court filing Monday, Musk said he was dismissing his complaint “without prejudice” — meaning that he could try to revive it.

Representatives for Musk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.